A/N: Partly my take on what inspired my Hattie character - an early '80s "Born Loser" (a creation of Art and Chip Sansom) Sunday comic which later made me ponder Hurricane Hattie's mom being adopted by Duffy. A 5YO wouldn't be punished just for making silly faces and being "childish" at home. With no context it looks like that. But if she did it to distract her mom while being lectured about other mischief, it'd fit. There's a decent chance her mom isn't as harsh – what Hurricane Hattie got lectured for is the key. So, I leave wiggle room - there's a different between not picking up her toys and what I mention, though even with it the mom might have calmed down. It's up to the reader.

Epilogue -Full Circle - From Duffy's '80s Expanded Biography and Possible Born Loser Crossover

Every mother has said it – "I hope you grow up to have children just like you!"

My dear Hattie, now Harriet, sure did. But Harriet's girl is a lot nicer than she had been when little, due to a loving home from the start.

She had changed her name after to Harriet a while to show she was a lot kinder, but my first child was still loud at times, brash – a lot of the same things that helped us to bond back in 1943, till I knew I had to adopt that girl.

And now, her five-year-old girl, Hurricane Hattie as she's known…

Well, my GrandHurricane's not mean. Just very playful, imaginative, loud, sometimes brash. She's just the kind you know, if you can teach her how to use her powers for good, will be a force to be reckoned with against the Miss Hannigans of the world. Justlike I was, like I taught Annie to be. Pepper didn't have my tact. Maybe Juy could have been the negotiator without me, but I like to think God used me as a great counterweight. And maybe when she tied her friend's shoelaces together once and had to sit in the corner and apologize, it was like when I stomped on Miss Hannigan's foot.

Harriet called me one evening a few years back; her husband was away on business.

"You sound exhausted," I said kindly.

"Hattie wanted to call you herself. She's jumping for the phone right now." I could just see her mom turning as she tried to keep it from her, wrapping herself in the cord if she wasn't careful. "It's not quite bath time; we just finished supper. She listened then, didn't you, Hattie?"

I heard the emphasis on "then" and Hurricane Hattie's "gimme"s. I'm the grandma – I know both people well. "Does she need a sleepover? I can come pick her up. It's why I live fairly close when I'm not performing." I had cut back a fair deal anyway when John was sick, before he passed – those war injuries had taken a toll. He lived to see Hurricane Hattie born, though. And I got to help Harriet after she settled down to make sure she'd be a good mom. I knew – given how uncertain Harriet was about handling a baby – I'd be looked to a lot at first.

By this point I was mostly just the occasional help. Harriet lets Hurricane Hattie go a fair amount – her hair is always wild, for one – and might let her sass people more than most would, but she and her husband are still great parents for this very spirited granddaughter.

I showed up half an hour later, and was pleasantly surprised that Hurricane Hattie had taken a bath; if Harriet was really frazzled, she'd let me fight that fight rather than lose her temper. Hurricane Hattie knew that, too – it was a game to her, and she made Mom forfeit a few times, in her younger years.

Yes, here just like 60 years earlier as I danced for my own mostly bedridden Mathair Criona, I danced through raindrops, and was sure to try to always put a smile on peoples' faces, just like Annie and I would do for others in Miss Hannigan's orphanage.

"Hey, Hurricane," I teased her as she ran into my arms and we embraced after her mom hjad let me in. "Your mom said you were getting your clothes on over your jammies; you've been good for her this evening, huh?"

As Hurricane Hattie nodded, an mipish grin formed on her face. Meanwhile, her mom said, "This evening yes. Before that?" She heaved a huge sigh that told me this might be one of those times when Hattie "told on" her but left out a few details.

Indeed, she might have called and said that she got in trouble for being goofy, without explaining – so the fact she didn't meant perhaps Harriet hadn't come down hard

Of course, she did have a different plan.

"Mom said you really had to come down hard on her a couple times. Can you tell me about those?" she asked eagerly. Too eagerly? I wasn't sure. But it seemed like her mom had told her this for some reason this afternoon.

"Did she come down on you?" I asked. Grandmas know these things. I let my Hurricane rest in my arms while I passed her mom a smile and look that said "I trust you, but I would like to know details for the record" look, remembering how she'd been. "What happened?"

"Well, it started out okay, Hurricane Hattie was in one of her moods…" As she spoke, I could tell Harriet was trying to phrase things so Hurricane Hattie wouldn't distract her, though from the girl's blush, I doubted she would do that. "After lunch she tries to sneak candy again like she had right before lunch; I'd told her no candy this afternoon because she'd snuck cookies frm the cookie jar right before lunch. I scolded her and she made funny faces at me; just being…" She shook her head. "So, I made Hurricane Hattie sit in the corner, I ignored it pretty well. Once I let her out, things were too quiet after a while. I looked in the living room…"

"I notice you're trying not to say 'childish' like you usually do," I pointed out.

Harriet nodded. "If you don't want to hear me tell Grandma Duffy, go get your overnight bag ready." She decided to do so and left. Harriet spoke reluctantly, "Hurricane Hattie had been in my nail polish and was painting a chair with it. We went back and forth, me getting more upset at her for sticking her tongue out and making silly noises when I'm trying to have a mature talk with her about her bad behavior. Eventually, I'd had enough."

I pictured the scene. Yes, that was my grandHurricane, all right. Continuing to stick her tongue out and distract her mom, till her mom starts shouting about being "childish." She grabs her by the arm, whisks her away toward a chair, and tells her what's going to happen because she's being so "childish," forgetting in her frustration that her main problem was the nail polish all over the furniture.

Which led, then, as she began to raise her hand, to Hurricane Hattie asking, "If I can't act childish at five, when can I act childish?" Even if it was to distract her mom, it was a legitimate question – one that wouldn't have come had she just complained about the newly bright pink furniture portions.

"Did you explain?" I asked, knowing where this was going. Now, I just wanted to be sure Hurricane Hattie understood and that her mom hadn't been too harsh.

"I didn't think I'd have to, till she spouted that. That forced me to take a step back and think. I calmly explained this was for her naughty behavior but especially for not listening as I tried to lovingly correct her, and then continuing to try to cause chaos to distract me when she should be polite and…" Harriet sighed again. "Well, I told her that much and gave her a chance to be contrite, so if she was I wouldn't come down like I'd planned. And I let her cry in my arms as we talked about it afterward, just like I always do. I try to always be kind and understanding, just like you taught me, even when it was more than a lot of time in the corner – and you know Hattie's been in the corner a lot some weeks." I could sense a little emotion as Harriet added, "You wer always so kind and we hugged and talked so much afterward, even that time you had to do more than the usual toughest, that time when I…"

I knew which one she meant when she trailed off. Hurricane Hattie had reappeared with her bag and had an expectant grin – she wanted desperately to know what her mom had done. Harriet had hinted at it, it appeared, but hadn't given specifics.

Harriet had almost never come down really hard – what a kid that age would consider hard - in disciplining Hattie, so I knew she tried. Sometimes I thought about how great it'd be if she hadn't had an early childhood where… well, where it wasn't bad enough she'd had to be taken and put in Warbucks Home For Girls. But now, as Hurricane Hattie's mom, she did pretty well overall. That the nail polish incident was the big problem today; it sounded like she and Hattie had spent a long time cleaning where Hattie had "painted" with it. If it had only been the candy and other little things, she'd have avoided coming down hard for sure and possibly avoided coming close to it entirely.

But at least now, I had the privilege of helping her, and being there with Hurricane Hattie.

As I cuddled Hurricane Hattie and her mom came over to the couch and lovingly stroked Hattie's hair and pecked her on the cheek, the ornery little girl's impish grin grew. "That time what, Mom?" She turned to me. "What did she do?"

Another of those things in my bag of tricks. "Tell you what. If I tell you, you have to pinky promise you will never do it yourself or use it against your mother."

Hurricane Hattie's eyes grew wide. She loved mischief and using stuff for her own ends, but if I was making her pinky promise, this must be a secret that was really embarrassing. "Okay, I pinky promise." As we grasped pinky fingers, I told her it was over a week after her mother had come to Warbucks Home for Girls. She began to give her mom a smug look, then she remembered. "Okay, pinky promise. I won't tell anyone and I won't do it or use it."

"Let's go back to my house," I suggested, "your mom would be embarrassed to hear it." There was the slim chance Hurricane Hattie would forget how much she wanted to know as she donned her fancy hat. It was just like what I'd gotten soon after getting out of that orphanage and with my adoptive family; Annie's Daddy Warbucks had said money would be no object so the best adoptive families would be found and given trusts, managed by Warbucks. That hat was a symbol of freedom, of making it, etc.. I wore it when I met Ethel Merman for the first time, during my first show, and so on. 'd had severa. And now, Hurricane Hattie had one just like mine.

She knew the stories, like about my hat. And she remembered the promise as I poured some cocoa for each of us at my house; I did that with each grandchild, but there was something special about sharing it with this spirited mischief maker.

"Okay, you said we would wait till morning to fight fire-breathing dragons if you spent the night telling me," Hurricane Hattie said.

She was too sharp to forget – that wait hadn't been a good stall tactic like it would have been a couple years ago. And "spent the night?" You mean before you go to bed," I said with a laugh.

"You know me," she said as we giggled together. I had to be on my toes so she wouldn't try to claim I'd promised we could be up half the night.

"Well, Dear, your mother had it really rough – her brain was scared of a lot of stuff when she got there, but instead of showing love, she repeated what she'd seen. And… "

On I went, telling this mesmerized five-year old. "You know she won't be like that now, right?"

A year or two before, she might have said I wouldn't let her. Now? She had more faith. "You taught Mom to be nice. But you were an orphan." She thought a moment. "I guess God taught you, huh?"

"You're right; I trusted Him as my Saviour, just like I hope you do one day. I called on Him to save me from my sins, those times I go my own way, against His perfection, and believed He died on the cross to save me from my sins, and then He rose from the dead," I said triumphantly. "I called on Him to be my Saviour, and He has helped me with so much as I've trusted Him and listened to Him as He worked inside me."

She said something which stunned me – but maybe it shouldn't have, given her cleverness. "You were smart to make me pinky promise." She grinned sheepishly. "I'd never be like that…"

"I know you wouldn't, Dear," I said as I stroked her hair.

"But I might have used it against Mom." She toothy, sheepish grin told me she understood the pinky promise – she knew now, but it was unfair to use against her mom.

Then, she continued as she claimed into my lap

"You're the best Mathair Criona in the whole world!"

I was stunned. I'd never used that term, nor had her mother. "Where did you hear that term?"

"One of your friends," she said, referring to Annie, Molly, July, Pepper, Tessie, Kate… it could have been any of them, but only one had been adopted by a family with living Irish ancestors as of the end of 1933. "They said it means 'wise mother.'"

I got choked up. "I don't know if I've told you about my grandma – or maybe great-grandma…" I didn't know what to say.

As we hugged in those moments before bedtime and talked about what I meant to Hurricane Hattie – my love for wildness yet teaching of self-control, my love for loudness yet teaching of respect, and my flair the silliness at the right times – I couldn't help but think back to those now long-ago memories, which are probably greatly enhanced by my constantly reliving the stories as a child – came flooding back. That warm, caring Mathair Criona who had had such an impact despite her limited time and ability to care for me.

A couple years later, soon before the publishing of this sequel to my autobiography, she did trust Christ as her Saviour. Since then, Hurricane Hattie has continued growing into a wonderful young lady who will one day do amazing things for the Lord, who builds treasures in Heaven now with her kindness mingled with her wild creativity as she helps others, and who might just humbly ask the Lord if – when we right back on horses as Jesus returns to Earth – she can have what Job 40 and 41 call behemoth or leviathan – likely a dinosaur - to ride instead.

For now, she finally began to get sleepy. "Are you sure we can't fight some dragons now?" Hurricane Hattie asked as I carried her into her room.

"Tomorrow, sweetheart," I said gentl. "You'll have a far better time in your imagination and dreams, anyway."

She sighed reluctantly, being worn out as usual from her full day of play. But I couldn't help but twirl a little once I tucked her in, pecked her on the cheek, and said "I love you."

It had been a long time in coming. But even though we hadn't had much time together, somehow I'd managed to learn, through determination and the grace of God, to be the woman I'd always admired, the role I'd always seen as perfect, imparting love, encouragement, and so much more to others. Not just on a stage or through friendship, but through the love of family.

I had truly become Mathair Criona.